This paper discusses the movie XXY and how its main character's, Alex, life can be examined via Sigmund Freud's Five Stages of Psychosexual Development. Alex is an intersex teenager who lives in Argentina and who was born with both female and male gene Talia. Although the viewer does not witness her childhood development, Alex is clearly in her teen years at the time during which the movie takes place. Her development in the movie directly parallels Sigmund Freud's last psychosexual development stage: the genital stage. Alex, who is referred to as a girl in this paper due to her parents considering to be such, establishes both independence from her family and experiences an romantic relationship with someone outside the family; these could both be considered criteria for Freud's last psychosexual stage. Additionally, Alex is also going through puberty and all the rigors that came with it. .
XXY, which is a 2007 film directed by Lucia Penza, is the coming of age story of a teen named Alex, who lives in isolation in a small Argentinian town. Alex's parents, who fear for their daughter's safety, purposely live there because Alex harbors a terrible secret: she was born intersex. She has the gene Talia of both genders and must take female hormones to maintain her feminine appearance. Her family does not want her to face the cruelty of the outside world so Kraken, Alex's marine biologist father, has the family move to a small coastal town, which benefits his work and ensures Alex's safety. Towards the beginning of the movie, the audience learns that Alex, much to the shock of her mother, has stopped taking the hormones that encouraged her development into a young woman. Although Kraken loves Alex for who she is, his wife, Suli, invites a plastic surgeon, Ramiro, and his family to come stay with them. Suli wants Alex to become a woman and to have Ramiro perform a transsexual surgery on her.